Friday, March 1, 2013

OPERA WEEK

Cleveland
Institute of Music

February
27

Bohemian
National Hall

February
24

Allyson Dezii, right, portrays an anguished novitiate.

The
opera gods smiled on Cleveland this week with two – count ’em! –
productions encompassing 140 years of musical history and spanning
the far reaches of comedy and tragedy. The ambitious Opera Circle
served up one of the great opera buffas, Rossini’s The Barber of
Seville, in the Old World setting of Bohemian National Hall. On
the modern stage at the Cleveland Institute of Music, David Bamberger
directed a searing 20th-century work, Francis Poulenc’s Dialogues
of the Carmelites.

Bamberger
built Carmelites around a compelling contemporary theme, which
he outlines in the program. Noting the prevalence of religious
fanaticism in today’s world, he offers Poulenc’s opera as a
“valuable corrective,” a reminder that sectarian violence can be
just as blind, especially in a society with growing wealth disparity,
political partisanship and a taste for blood. In the 1794 setting of
the opera, the French Revolution is underway and the guillotine,
rather than the gun, is taking innocent lives. Carmelites
focuses on a community of nuns caught up in the anti-religious
fervor, and the terrible fate it brings.

The
action opens with a ragtag mob that accosts an aristocrat and then
chases him up the aisle. It’s an ingenious device that Bamberger
reprises throughout the evening to great effect. With pitchfork-armed
vigilantes liable to burst through the doors and swarm down the
aisles at any moment, it’s not just the aristocrats and nuns
onstage who are in danger; implicitly, the audience is threatened as
well. Bamberger also does an impressive job of keeping the action
moving – no small achievement in an opera whose first half is
mostly spiritual angst and philosophical musings performed in
recitative.

The
singing was uniformly good, though with few standouts. As the
novitiate Blanche, Allyson Dezii crafted a sympathetic character with
tender, often imploring singing. Ellyn Glasscock and Cynthia
Skelley-Wohlschlager gave strong performances as the head nuns at the
convent, with the latter turning in a commanding death scene to close
the first act. And include Laura Anne Cotney (Sister Constance) on
the list of singers who mastered the demanding vocal lines, which
call for high-pitched shrieks at odd moments (a function partly of
performing the opera in English).

The
music is riveting, a dramatic mix of tension, color and impending
doom offset by religious hymns, all rendered with skillful flair by
conductor Harry Davidson. Almost every passage in the score mirrors
the emotions playing out onstage, and Davidson did expert work
setting the narrative tone. Even the interludes between scenes,
mostly given to the woodwinds, were captivating. The sound of the
guillotine punctuated the music in the final scene with devastating
emotional impact, a measure of how well Davidson and Bamberger
succeeded in assembling a taut, compelling production.

The
Barber of Seville was just the opposite – loose, light and
played for broad laughs, as it should be. After one of the more
familiar musical introductions in all of opera, the title character,
Figaro, is enlisted to help Count Almaviva win his true love, Rosina.
She is ensconced in the home of Doctor Bartolo, who has his own
designs on her, so that entails disguises, a ladder at the balcony
window and other high jinks that end happily for the lovers (and in
this production, a consolation prize for the befuddled doctor).

Sobieska and Miles.

The
female lead in Opera Circle productions is sung by Executive Director
Dorota Sobieska, an experienced soprano with a fondness for bel
canto. She gave a spirited performance but was not quite up to the
vocal demands of Rosina, faltering at points in the recitative and
some of the coloratura runs. Diana Farrell, younger and stronger in
voice, had a nice turn as her maid Berta. John Gray Watson (Figaro)
outshone Matthew Miles (Count Almaviva) in most of their scenes
together, but it was Jason Budd as Doctor Bartolo who dominated the
male cast, with strong, agile vocals and a witty slapstick
performance.

Music
was provided by the Cleveland Women’s Orchestra, which sounded
remarkably rich and full, given the hall’s tenuous acoustics.
Conductor Robert Croquist set a lively pace with the famous overture,
and maintained a brisk, engaging flow throughout. His work in the
ensemble sequences was particularly good, especially to close out the
second act.

Opera
Circle productions have a clunky charm – painted curtain scenery,
singers bumping into each other, Sobieska encouraging the audience
before this performance to “feel free to laugh.” But she and her
husband Jacek Sobieski, who was music director at the National
Theater in Warsaw for nearly two decades, are serious professionals
working hard to bring opera to a city without a standing company.
Given their resources, they do a remarkable job. And technical
shortcomings notwithstanding, their productions are a delight,
heartfelt and accessible to even casual listeners, as the packed
house at the Bohemian National Hall demonstrated.

In
June, Opera Circle will take a big step up with a production of
Rigoletto at the Ohio Theater featuring an imported conductor
and lead singer. This critic can hardly wait.

Dialogues
of the Carmelites plays again on March 1 & 2. For
tickets:www.cim.edu

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QUICK TAKES

Mr. Culture is off to Europe to cover the Prague Spring Festival and promote his new book, Festival Europe.

The book is a hybrid travel and music guide, an overview of the summer music circuit in 14 European countries, with detailed listings for 60 of the best festivals.

Beethoven in Bonn, Bach in Leipzig, Mozart in Salzburg, Dvořák in Prague – it’s all here, along with links to English-language tourist sites.

If you’re thinking of visiting Europe this year, this is the way to go, hearing the world’s greatest music as you’ve never heard it before.

For more on the book, click on the image above.

See you at the castle. Or Roman amphitheater. Or high in the Alps, where the eagles soar to Schubert.

THE AUTHOR

Frank Kuznik is a longtime journalist and culture writer covering Northeast Ohio's vibrant arts and entertainment scene. Born and raised in Cleveland, Frank has worked extensively throughout the U.S. and Europe, most recently in Prague as the Editor-in-chief and Culture Editor of The Prague Post. For a taste of the Prague music scene, see pragueculture.blogspot.com.